Thursday, May 22, 2008

Yes, I read it. A first-person article about narcissism wins every time anyone looks at it, so a response of, 'it's a stupid article' is pointless now that it's there in the Times. Clearly someone didn't think it was dumb! Some complaints about the piece seem to be that instead of writing about her love life, Emily Gould could have been saving the world. Well, that goes for nearly all of us.

My question is, where are the people with even slightly interesting problems in their love-lives? First there's Philip Weiss revealing that middle-aged men like hot young women. Now there's Gould letting us know that 20-something hetero hipsters break up and reshuffle partners from time to time. It seems that if you're going to reinvent the wheel, and not even attempt to come up with an original argument, the writing had better be amazing. And if it isn't, please have something different going on in your personal life. If there were some subtext, if Gould were the tattooed dreamboat Weiss had been after all along, then that would at least be something. I'd almost prefer it if Henry the Gould ex took up with Weiss's jilted wife, but it's really their call.